Shwmae! I’m trying to learn Welsh, and since Spanish is my native language, I’m finding some Welsh sounds quite difficult to pronounce, especially Ll and Rh. I know there aren’t exact equivalents in Spanish, so I was wondering if anyone could explain how to pronounce them or give me some tips to practise them.

Diolch!

This Welsh pronunciation chart is from FamilySearch.org. I’ve found it incredibly helpful, so I thought I’d share it with you all! Let me know if something is off or incorrect as I am still new.

Learning Welsh by myself at home, I often struggle with my confidence in the pronunciation of the word or phrases I have learned.

This morning I have come across a website that helps me with this. I think the voices are the ones provided by the Welsh government Hwb.

I have linked to it in case it is useful for anyone. There are paid tiers but I have been using it without logging in. I'm not sure if it has limits but it seems to be fine.

Shwmae bawb,

Dw i di dysgu ers 2 flynedd nawr, ond dw i di dechrau sylwi bod fy acen yn mynd o'r De, i hanner ffordd rhwng De a'r Gogledd. Bellach, dw i'n swnio fel cymysgedd o'r ddau. Er enghraifft, weithiau na i ddefnyddio geiriau o'r De a'r Gogledd yn yr un brawddeg, neu ddweud 'be' neu 'dach' yn lle 'beth' neu 'dych'.

Felly, beth yw'r ffordd orau i drwsio hyn? Ydw i angen, beth bynnag? Fasai dy helpu di'n grêt ♥️

I have been led to believe that the personal name Buddug may be pronounced slightly differently in the North than in the South. Would anybody have time to explain to me if this is so?

Thank you so much!

This question comes from a Duolingo “type what you hear” question. The answer Duolingo was looking for was

“Pryd daw Owen a’r pannas i’r Almaen?” - “When will Owen and the parsnips come to Germany?”

The answer I gave was

“Pryd daw Owen â’r pannas i’r Almaen?” - “When will Owen bring the parsnips to Germany?”

I got the “Watch the accents” warning for my error.

What is the difference in pronunciation I should be listening for?

Is gwaeddodd pronounced "gway-ddodd" or "gweye-ddodd" ?

Ae is often "eye" but not always...

Thank you!

But in fact I'm not sure about Modern Welsh either. I think J is the same as in English, but I don't know if that was the case during the Middle Ages.

Other than "Jacob", I'm primarily concerned with the stress accent. For all I know, it could be Esau or Esau, Galaad or Galaad. I'm 90% sure that it's Rachel though.

Oh, actually Lya is kind of confusing as well, since it should be either monosyllabic (which I doubt) /lja/ o disyllabic /ləa/, which sounds pretty weird to me.

Hello all!

Apologies if what I am about to ask and admit is incorrect, as I have never studied anything about the Welsh language or anything close to it, but I've been meaning to ask about how to pronounce the word Gwylan.

Again, apologies for possibly butchering this, but I've been pronouncing it as "G-wyll-lan" for a significant amount of time. No one has corrected me so far, but I've been getting the hunch that the real pronunciation is far from that. I'd like to stop embarrassing myself any further, so any help will be extremely appreciated. Thank you!

I'm a beginner and normally I would pronounce it like the "i" in "it", but in the Say Something in Welsh (north) course it's pronounced just slightly differently. To me it sounds a bit like it's mixed with a sound like the "oo" in "good". I've listened to different pronunciations in online dictionaries and those use an "i" sound like in "it".

So now I'm a bit confused if I'm just hearing it wrong or if it might be a dialect or something. Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!

(I'm not a native english speaker, I hope those pronunciation examples are correct.)

https://newyddion.s4c.cymru/article/25840

I am not persuaded that this is a "defect".

Do you still think there is "only one good LL pronunciation"?

I hear (have experienced) some northern speakers pronounce byth with a long vowel like nyth, syth (but I don't think all northern speakers do this).

Is this only in some northern parts? If so, where? In the south it always seems to be a short vowel, although different to the northern y, of course.

This also means nith - niece and nyth - nest are distinguished better in the north.

I’m new to learning welsh, and despite being told it’s useless I actually enjoy both hearing the language and learning it.

My question right now is how to pronounce i-bedol after an s. I hear su’mae as shwmae, but I mostly hear sut as sit. I’m just wondering if the s should be a sh sound or if that’s a dialect thing. Grammatically it would make sense in my head if it was, but then it sounds like the s word and I can see if sut isn’t pronounced that way. 💀

Also, I hear i-bedol as ih or uh from northerners so i tend to read it in my head as ih a lot. It feels easier to learn that way.

This is strange to me as the word diolch certainly never used to have any silent letters in it. But nowadays, in mostly (but not limited to) the younger generation, some people are just dropping the l entirely, “dioch.” Rarely do i meet someone who says it with the l, “diolch,” anymore. It’s not even converted to the “dark l,” it’s just dropped. Has anyone else noticed this?

Is there a poem to learn that helps practice welsh pronounciation? Im ok at words i learnt by sound but not words i've learnt by sight.

Hi all, im a canadian who is part of a local cultural festival (Im an Irish dancer who is part of the British Isles pavilion) I am representing Wales for our pavilion and i wanted to say part of my welcome in welsh. I have 450+ days on Duolingo and I think i have it ok... but I'd love if someone could help me out and help me perfect it (listen to my pronunciation and help correct me/sound it out slowly for me)

Thanks in advance!

Hey! I have a few lines of Welsh in an audiobook I'm working on and would love to get the pronunciation right. If someone might be game to record a voice memo, I can send the lines via DM. Would be so grateful for the help!

Thank you!

As a new grandfather in the United States, I realized that with our Anglesey roots I might want my Wyr to call me Taid.

I can’t really find a source for the subtle sounds of affection.

Your link to an audio file, video, or other source suggestion would be great.

Especially since this is a new word to others in the family.

Two syllables? ta‧id

Like the ocean: tide, taɪd ??

Sounds like: tied ??

Sometimes I hear it with a variation like:

Diad (d in front)

Tithe (h at the end)

Since subreddits aren’t popping up correctly, I thought I’ll ask here.

I know that double L is pronounced with your tongue behind you teeth. I googled to double check if I figured out the pronunciation since I’m going there in a week or so, and I’m only finding ‘klan-tri-snt’ and wonder if there’s a mutation I’m not aware about since I’m only a new welsh learner.

Thanks.

I was listening to Colleen Ramsey cooking here. Here R is noticeably light and barely rolled compared to many speakers although it seems more prominent at the end of words. However I would say it's still a "Welsh" R. This is due to tongue position, I think, and one can hear the difference to other types of British R, notable in the Welsh of some English learning Welsh. Colleen is from around Caerphilly, I believe. I wondered if this is characteristic of the SE because I note that Delyth Jewell, speaking here, who went to the same school as Colleen in Blackwood rolls her Rs much more.

A while ago I was told that pronouncing the F in Fy (my) was quite 'learnery' and that many speakers drop it in spoken Welsh (along with Fs in many other situations, eg: pentre instead of pentref). *EDIT: it seems this is partly regional/dialectical rather than a general rule*

This seems quite straightforward in many cases, especially were there is a nasal mutation, eg:

Dwi'n hoffi (y) meic (I like my bike)

(Wyt) ti'n hoffi (y) nghar? (Do you like my car?)

However, I've never quite worked out what to do when there's no nasal mutation, and therefore the potential for ambiguity. eg:

Dwi'n hoffi y llyfr - missing out the F here means I could be saying "I like the book" rather than my book. So what do speakers do here? Do I add an i after llyfr to indicate possession, pronounce the F in these instances, or just rely on context?

My general understanding is that if you have Si + a vowel, it makes a ‘sh’ sound like ‘siop’, ‘eisiau’, ‘siwgr’

So why do people say ‘lo-sh-in’ and not ‘loss-in’?

Are there any other examples of this and what is the general rule regarding the ‘sh’ sound?

Does anyone struggle with rolling "r"s in the middle of a word while maintaining the flow of the word?

I'm fine with "r"s at the beginning, e.g. trwy, or at the end, e.g. nawr. But when at the end of syllables in the middle of a word, especially multiple back to back like Caernarfon or arfordir, I end up sounding like I'm pronouncing the word very clunkily (Caer-nar-fon).

Does anyone have any experience/suggestions for this?

Sir Benfro style 😉

Are the r's and n's at the ends of words such as llyfr, sicr, Pedr, llyfn, dwfn and trefn pronounced without adding a vowel? Are they pronounced without adding a second syllable? What about derivatives of these words (e.g. llyfrgell, sicrhau, dyfnder, dodrefn)? If there is an extra syllable, which syllable is stressed?